Today, I spent an hour and a half driving around looking for a place I’ve been to many times. Before I left, I checked Google Maps for the location to enter it into my GPS, but I needed to remember the address number. So, I entered the street number and the town my brain signaled it to be on. I have become so dependent on GPS that I no longer try to remember street numbers, names, or addresses. The problem is that I didn’t have that information programmed into my unit. Therefore, I used dead reckoning and GPS. I learned that doing so is not only dumb but dangerous. My top-notch brain is no longer as sharp as I remember. I remembered the place being on 147th Street. The problem is that 147th does not exist in that stretch of land, but the GPS kept taking me to nowhere, trying to find it. After driving a complete circle of a one-mile radius, I felt I was close, but as the old-timer I asked for directions told me once, “You can’t get there from here.”
Eventually, my memory kicked in after deducing that the previous recollection was wrong, and by accident, I remembered the street from which I could enter was 152nd; I finally located the place I wanted to go to. The upside of this escapade was seeing a portion of Orland Park that I never knew existed before. I don’t think the upside has enough value to warrant taking that route again.
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